Incident, injury and hazard investigation
The main aim of investigating incidents and hazards is to:
prevent similar incidents recurring in the future
identify any new hazards
identify and choose suitable controls.
Investigation should occur as soon as possible. The less time between an incident and the investigation, the more accurate the information obtained. While concern for an injured person shall take precedence over everything else, when incidents involving injury or illness occur, early investigation is essential.
Information required when investigating an incident, injury or hazard includes:
What happened?
How it happened?
Why it happened?
Investigations of incidents, injuries or hazards are not to be used as vehicles to allocate blame. Successful incident investigation requires everyone's co-operation to prevent possible recurrence in the future. Any suggestion that blame allocation or 'scape-goating' is intended would jeopardise the investigator's credibility and reduce the quality and accuracy of information supplied